Google showed off a new version of the Android Development Tools at I/O, but the company wasn’t ready to release it just yet. Well, they are now. Google just announced on its Android blog that the new ADT is all set to be enjoyed by developers.

If you think some of Android’s third-party apps look a little unpolished, you’ll be happy to know that this new version of the ADT focuses mostly on the Visual Layout Editor, with more than 20 features aimed specifically at making it easier for developers to design their apps. With new features like “Extract Style” and “Extract Include,” making your Android app look good is now easier than ever. There are many more features in this update, and you can see a list of them all right here.

Hopefully, this new version of the ADT will give Android apps a much-needed improvement in the UI department. Having said that, it is up to the developers to take advantage of these new tools–which we hope they will. After downloading the new ADT, you should watch the hour-long Google I/O session (embedded below) in which Android engineers show everything that’s new in this ADT.

Alberto is a college student living somewhere between Miami, Sarasota and the World Wide Web. Although a former iPhone owner, Alberto is now a proud Android enthusiast. You can follow Alberto on Twitter and Google+ for his thoughts unworthy of an article.

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I don’t claim to be an apple developer (I’m not) but my understanding is that iOS developers have had tools such as these for quite some time.

http://Website TWiT Commander

The primary difference between designing UI for iOS and Android is that in iOS, the UI is locked to each resolution; in Android, you can reflow the UI to fit different screen sizes.

In the case of iOS, if you use an iPhone app on an iPad for example, the whole UI is blown up and looks blurry, not for just raster art, but for text as well. In Android, the UI expands to fill the screen; text will remain sharp, but raster elements may get blurry.

After using the old one, I saw this video at google I/O. I’ve been dying for it ever since. Awesome that it’s out.

http://Website Daniel

Um, saying it has the goal of making Android apps look better is quite a stretch. The main new feature of this plugin is previewing fragments inside the editor, but even that hardly helps in improving the UI, only makes it less painful to preview.

To put in perspective, this is like saying a new HTML editor with a slightly better preview pane will make your websites look better when what you really need is a graphics editor and a good set of widgets.

http://www.nexsoftware.net Justin Shapcott

I’m gonna have to agree here. This update is about improving the workflow of UI development far more than making the UI pretty.

http://Website JayMonster

Having come from Visual Studio to Eclipse and ADT, I will say, anything that improved the UI dev process can only help developers improve their UI. Early versions were just plain painful.